An address delivered
from the East Steps of the National Capitol at Washington, D.C., on Sunday,
May 16, 1920, in connection with the Annual Session of the Southern Baptist
Convention, and at the request of the Baptist Churches of Washington.

The Sunday School Board of the
Southern Baptist Convention
Nashville, Tennessee

FOREWORD

This address
was arranged for weeks before the Southern Baptist Convention met in Washington.
Washington City Baptists are directly responsible for it. The speaker, Dr.
George W. Truett, pastor First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, was chosen by a
representative group of Baptists to deliver the address. It was delivered to a
vast audience of from ten to fifteen thousand people from the east steps of the
National Capitol, three o?clock Sunday afternoon, May 16, 1920. It was not a
Convention session, though the Convention was largely represented in the
audience by its members.

Since Paul
spoke before Nero, no Baptist speaker ever pleaded the cause of truth in
surroundings so dignified, impressive and inspiring. The shadow of the Capitol
of the greatest and freest nation on earth, largely made so by the infiltration
of Baptist ideas through the masses, fell on the vast assembly, composed of
Cabinet members, Senators and members of the Lower House, Foreign Ambassadors,
intellectuals in all callings, with peoples of every religious order and of all
classes.

The subject
was fit for the place, the occasion and the assembly. The speaker had prepared
his message. In a voice clear and far-reaching he carried his audience through
the very heart of his theme. History was invoked, but far more, history was
explained by the inner guiding principles of a people who stand today, as they
have always stood, for full and equal religious liberty for all people.

There was no
trimming, no froth, no halting, and not one arrogant or offensive tone or word.
It was a bold, fair, thorough-going setting out of the history and life
principles of the people called Baptists. And then, logically and becomingly,
the speaker brought his Baptist brethren to look forward and take up the burdens
of liberty and fulfill its high moral obligations, declaring that defaulters in
the moral realm court death.

His address
advances the battle line for the denomination. It is a noble piece of work,
worthy the wide circulation it is sure to receive. Intelligent Baptists should
pass it on.

A serious
word was said in that august presence concerning national obligations as they
arise out of a civilization animated and guided by Christian sentiments and
principles. As a nation we cannot walk the ways of selfishness without walking
down hill.

I commend
this address as the most significant and momentous of our day.

SOUTHERN
BAPTISTS count it a high privilege to hold their Annual Convention this year in
the National Capitol, and they count it one of life?s highest privileges to be
the citizens of our one great, united country.

Grand in her rivers and her
rills.
Grand in her woods and templed hills;
Grand in the wealth that glory yields,
Illustrious dead, historic fields;
Grand in her past, her present grand,
In sunlit skies, in fruitful land;
Grand in her strength on land and sea.
Grand in religious liberty.

It behooves
us often to look backward as well as forward. We should be stronger and braver
if we thought oftener of the epic days and deeds of our beloved and immortal
dead. The occasional backward look would give us poise and patience and courage
and fearlessness and faith. The ancient Hebrew teachers and leaders had a genius
for looking backward to the days and deeds of their mighty dead. They never
wearied of chanting the praises of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, of Moses and
Joshua and Samuel; and thus did they bring to bear upon the living the inspiring
memories of the noble actors and deeds of bygone days. Often such a cry as this
rang in their ears: "Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of
the pit whence ye are digged. Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that
bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him."

THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGIOUS
LIBERTY

We shall do
well, both as citizens and as Christians, if we will hark back to the chief
actors and lessons in the early and epoch-making struggles of this great Western
democracy, for the full establishment of civil and religious liberty?back to the
days of Washington and Jefferson and Madison, and back to the days of our
Baptist fathers, who have paid such a great price, through the long generations,
that liberty, both religious and civil, might have free course and be glorified
everywhere.

Years ago,
at a notable dinner in London, that world-famed statesman, John Bright, asked an
American statesman, himself a Baptist, the noble Dr. J. L. M. Curry, "What
distinct contribution has your America made to the science of government?" To
that question Dr. Curry replied: "The doctrine of religious liberty." After a
moment?s reflection, Mr. Bright made the worthy reply: "It was a tremendous
contribution."

SUPREME CONTRIBUTION OF NEW
WORLD

Indeed, the
supreme contribution of the new world to the old is the contribution of
religious liberty. This is the chiefest contribution that America has thus far
made to civilization. And historic justice compels me to say that it was
pre-eminently a Baptist contribution. The impartial historian, whether in the
past, present or future, will ever agree with our American historian, Mr.
Bancroft, when he says:" Freedom of conscience, unlimited freedom of mind, was
from the first the trophy of the Baptists." And such historian will concur with
the noble John Locke who said: "The Baptists were the first propounders of
absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty." Ringing
testimonies like these might be multiplied indefinitely.

NOT TOLERATION, BUT RIGHT

Baptists
have one consistent record concerning liberty throughout all their long and
eventful history. They have never been a party to oppression of conscience. They
have forever been the unwavering champions of liberty, both religious and civil.
Their contention now, is, and has been, and, please God, must ever be, that it
is the natural and fundamental and indefeasible right of every human being to
worship God or not, according to the dictates of his conscience, and, as long as
he does not infringe upon the rights of others, he is to be held accountable
alone to God for all religious beliefs and practices. Our contention is not for
mere toleration, but for absolute liberty. There is a wide difference between
toleration and liberty. Toleration implies that somebody falsely claims the
right to tolerate. Toleration is a concession, while liberty is a right.
Toleration is a matter of expediency, while liberty is a matter of principle.
Toleration is a gift from God. It is the consistent and insistent contention of
our Baptist people, always and everywhere, that religion must be forever
voluntary and uncoerced, and that it is not the prerogative of any power,
whether civil or ecclesiastical, to compel men to conform to any religious creed
or form of worship, or to pay taxes for the support of a religious organization
to which they do not believe. God wants free worshipers and no other kind.

A FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE

What is the
explanation of this consistent and notably praiseworthy record of our plain
Baptist people in the realm of religious liberty? The answer is at hand. It is
not because Baptists are inherently better than their neighbors ? we would make
no such arrogant claim. Happy are our Baptist people to live side by side with
their neighbors of other Christian communions, and to have glorious Christian
fellowship with such neighbors, and to honor such servants of God for their
inspiring lives and their noble deeds. From our deepest hearts we pray: "Grace
be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity." The spiritual
union of all true believers in Christ is now and ever will be a blessed reality,
and such union is deeper and higher and more enduring than any and all forms and
rituals and organizations. Whoever believes in Christ as his personal Saviour is
our brother in the common salvation, whether he be a member of one communion or
of another, or of no communion at all.

How is it,
then, that Baptists, more than any other people in the world, have forever been
the protagonists of religious liberty, and its compatriot, civil liberty? They
did not stumble upon this principle. Their uniform, unyielding and sacrificial
advocacy of such principle was not and is not an accident. It is, in a word,
because of our essential and fundamental principles. Ideas rule the world. A
denomination is molded by its ruling principles, just as a nation is thus molded
and just as individual life is thus molded. Our fundamental essential principles
have made our Baptist people, of all ages and countries, to be the unyielding
protagonists of religious liberty, not only for themselves, but for everybody
else as well.

THE FUNDAMENTAL BAPTIST
PRINCIPLES

Such fact at
once provokes the inquiry: What are these fundamental Baptist principles which
compel Baptists in Europe, in America, in some far-off seagirt island, to be
forever contending for unrestricted religious liberty? First of all, and
explaining all the rest, is the doctrine of the absolute Lordship of Jesus
Christ. That doctrine is for Baptists the dominant fact in all their Christian
experience, the nerve center of all their Christian life, the bedrock of all
their church policy, the sheet anchor of all their rejoicings. They say with
Paul: "For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be
Lord both of the dead and living."

THE ABSOLUTE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST

From that
germinal conception of the absolute Lordship of Christ, all our Baptist
principles emerge. Just as yonder oak came from the acorn, so our many-branched
Baptist life came from the cardinal principle of the absolute Lordship of
Christ. The Christianity of our Baptist people, from Alpha to Omega, lives and
moves and has its whole being in the realm of the doctrine of the Lordship of
Christ. "One is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren." Christ is
the one head of the church. All authority has been committed unto him, in heaven
and on earth, and he must be given the absolute preeminence in all things. One
clear note is ever to be sounded concerning him, even this, "Whatsoever he saith
unto you, do it."

THE BIBLE OUR RULE OF FAITH AND
PRACTICE

How shall we
find our Christ?s will for us? He has revealed it in his Holy Word. The Bible,
and the Bible alone, is the rule of faith and practice for Baptists. To them the
one standard by which all creeds and conduct and character must be tried is the
Word of God. They ask only one question concerning all religious faith and
practice, and that question is, "What saith the Word of God?" Not traditions,
nor customs, nor councils, nor confessions, nor ecclesiastical formularies,
however venerable and pretentious, guide Baptists, but simply and solely the
will of Christ as they find it revealed in the New Testament. The immortal B.H.
Carroll has thus stated it for us: "The New Testament is the law of
Christianity. The New Testament always will be all the law of Christianity."

Baptists
hold that this law of Christianity, the Word of God, is the unchangeable and
only law of Christ?s reign, and that whatever is not found in the law cannot be
bound on the consciences of men, and that this law is a sacred deposit, an
inviolable trust, which Christ?s friends are commissioned to guard and
perpetuate wherever it may lead and whatever may be the cost of such
trusteeship.

EXACT OPPOSITE OF CATHOLICISM

The Baptist
message and the Roman Catholic message are the very antipodes of each other. The
Roman Catholic message is sacerdotal, sacramentarian, and ecclesiastical. In its
scheme of salvation it magnifies the church, the priest, and the sacraments. The
Baptist message is non-saceradotal, non-sacramentarian, and non-ecclesiastical.
Its teaching is that the one High Priest for sinful humanity has entered into
the holy place for all, that the veil is forever rent in twain, that the mercy
seat is uncovered and opened to all, and that the humblest soul in all the
world, if only he be penitent, may enter with all boldness and cast himself upon
God. The Catholic doctrine of baptismal regeneration and transubstantiation is
to the Baptist mind fundamentally subversive of the spiritual realities of the
gospel of Christ. Likewise, the Catholic conception of the church , thrusting
all its complex and cumbrous machinery between the soul and God, prescribing
beliefs, claiming to exercise the power of the keys, and to control the channels
of grace?all such lording it over the consciences of men is to the Baptist mind
a ghastly tyranny in the realm of the soul and tends to frustrate the grace of
God, to destroy freedom of conscience, and to hinder terribly the coming of the
Kingdom of God.

PAPAL INFALLIBILITY OR THE NEW
TESTAMENT

That was a
memorable hour in the Vatican Council, in 1870, when the dogma of papal
infallibility was passed by a majority vote. It is not to be wondered at that
the excitement was intense during the discussion of such dogma, and especially
when the final vote was announced. You recall that in the midst of all the
tenseness and tumult of that excited assemblage, Cardinal Manning stood on an
elevated platform, and in the midst of that assemblage and holding in his hand
the paper just passed, declaring for the infallibility of the Pope, he said:
"Let all the world go to bits and we will reconstruct it on paper." A Baptist
smiles at such an announcement as that, but not in derision and scorn. Although
the Baptist is the very antithesis of his Catholic neighbor in religious
conceptions and contentions, yet the Baptist will whole-heartedly contend that
his Catholic neighbor shall have his candles and incense and sanctus bell and
rosary, and whatever else he wishes in the expression of his worship. A Baptist
would rise at midnight to plead for absolute religious liberty for his Catholic
neighbor, and for his Jewish neighbor, and for everybody else. But what is the
answer of a Baptist to the contention made by the Catholic for papal
infallibility? Holding aloft a little book, the name of which is the New
Testament, and without any hesitation or doubt, the Baptist shouts his battle
cry: "Let all the world go to bits and we will reconstruct it on the New
Testament."

DIRECT INDIVIDUAL APPROACH TO
GOD

When we turn
to this New Testament, which is Christ?s guidebook and law for his people, we
find that supreme emphasis is everywhere put upon the individual. The individual
is segregated from family, from church, from state, and from society, from
dearest earthly friends or institution, and brought into direct, personal
dealings with God. Every one must give account of himself to God. There can be
no sponsors or deputies or proxies in such vital matter. Each one must repent
for himself, and believe for himself, and be baptized for himself, and answer to
God for himself, both in time and in eternity. The clarion cry of John the
Baptist is to the individual. "Think not to say within yourselves, We have
Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to
raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the ax is laid unto the root of the
trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down,
and cast into the fire." One man can no more repent and believe and obey Christ
for another than he can take the other?s place at God?s judgment bar. Neither
persons nor institutions, however dear and powerful, may dare to come between
the individual soul and God. "There is. . .one mediator between God and men, the
man Christ Jesus." Let the state and the church, let the institution, however
dear, and the person, however near, stand aside, and let the individual soul
make its own direct and immediate response to God. One is our pontiff, and his
name is Jesus. The undelegated sovereignty of Christ makes it forever impossible
for his saving grace to be manipulated by any system of human mediation
whatsoever.

The right to
private judgment is the crown jewel of humanity, and for any person or
institution to dare to come between the soul and God is a blasphemous
impertinence and a defamation of the crown rights of the Son of God.

Out of these
two fundamental principles, the supreme authority of the Scriptures and the
right of private judgment, have come all the historic protests in Europe or
England and America against unscriptural creeds, polity and rites, and against
the unwarranted and impertinent assumption of religious authority over men?s
consciences, whether by church or by state. Baptists regard as an enormity any
attempt to force the conscience, or to constrain men, by outward penalties, to
this or that form of religious belief. Persecution may make men hypocrites, but
it will not make them Christians.

INFANT BAPTISM UNTHINKABLE

It follows,
inevitably, that Baptists are unalterably opposed to every form of sponsorial
religion. If I have fellow Christians in this presence today who are the
protagonists of infant baptism, they will allow me to say frankly, and certainly
I would say it in the most fraternal, Christian spirit, that to Baptists infant
baptism is unthinkable from every viewpoint. First of all, Baptists do not find
the slightest sanction for infant baptism in the Word of God. That fact, to
Baptists, makes infant baptism a most serious question for the consideration of
the whole Christian world. Nor is that all. As Baptists see it, infant baptism
tends to ritualize Christianity and reduce it to lifeless forms. It tends also
and inevitably, as Baptists see it, to secularizing of the church and to the
blurring and blotting out of the line of demarcation between the church and the
unsaved world.

And since I
have thus spoken with unreserved frankness, my honored Pedobaptist friends in
the audience will allow me to say that Baptists solemnly believe that infant
baptism, with its implications, has flooded the world, and floods it now, with
untold evils.

They believe
also that it perverts the scriptural symbolism of baptism; that it attempts the
impossible tasks of performing an act of religious obedience by proxy, and that
since it forestalls the individual initiative of the child, it carries within it
the germ of persecution, and lays the predicate for the union of church and
state, and that it is a Romish tradition and a corner-stone for the whole system
of popery throughout the world.

I will speak
yet another frank word for my beloved Baptist people, to our cherished fellow
Christians who are not Baptists, and that word is that our Baptist people
believe that if all the Protestant denominations would once for all put away
infant baptism, and come to the full acceptance and faithful practice of New
Testament baptism, that the unity of all the non-Catholic Christians in the
world would be consummated, and that there would not be left one Roman Catholic
church on the face of the earth at the expiration of the comparatively short
period of another century.

Surely, in
the face of these frank statements, our non-Baptist neighbors may apprehend
something of the difficulties compelling Baptists when they are asked to enter
into official alliances with those who hold such fundamentally different views
from those just indicated. We call God to witness that our Baptist people have
an unutterable longing for Christian union, and believe Christian union will
come, but we are compelled to insist that if this union is to be real and
effective, it must be based upon a better understanding of the Word of God and a
more complete loyalty to the will of Christ as revealed in His Word.

THE ORDINANCES ARE SYMBOLS

Again, to
Baptists, the New Testament teaches that salvation through Christ must precede
membership in his church, and must precede the observance of the two ordinances
in his church, namely, baptism and the Lord?s Supper. These ordinances are for
the saved and only for the saved. These two ordinances are not sacramental, but
symbolic. They are teaching ordinances, portraying in symbol truths of
immeasurable and everlasting moment to humanity. To trifle with these symbols,
to pervert their forms and at the same time to pervert the truths they are
designed to symbolize, is indeed a most serious matter. Without ceasing and
without wavering, Baptists are, in conscience, compelled to contend that these
two teaching ordinances shall be maintained in the churches just as they were
placed there in the wisdom and authority of Christ. To change these two
meaningful symbols is to change their scriptural intent and content, and thus
pervert them, and we solemnly believe, to be the carriers of the most deadly
heresies. By our loyalty to Christ, which we hold to be the supreme test of our
friendship for him, we must unyeildingly contend for these two ordinances as
they were originally given to Christ?s churches.

THE CHURCH A PURE DEMOCRACY

To Baptists,
the New Testament also clearly teaches that Christ?s church is not only a
spiritual body but it is also a pure democracy, all its members being equal, a
local congregation, and cannot subject itself to any outside control. Such
terms, therefore, as "The American Church," or "The bishop of this city or
state," sound strangely incongruous to Baptist ears. In the very nature of the
case, also, there must be no union between church and state, because their
nature and functions are utterly different. Jesus stated the principle in the
two sayings, "My kingdom is not of this world," and "Render therefore unto
Caesar the things which are Caesar?s and unto God the things that are God?s."
Never, anywhere, in any clime, has a true Baptist been willing, for one minute,
for the union of church and state, never for a moment.

Every state
church on the earth is a spiritual tyranny. And just as long as there is left
upon this earth any state church, in any land, the task of Baptists will that
long remain unfinished. Their cry has been and is and must ever be this:

Let Caesar?s dues be paid
To Caesar and his throne;
But consciences and souls were made
To be the Lord?s alone.

A FREE CHURCH IN A FREE STATE

That
utterance of Jesus, "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar?s,
and unto God the things that are God?s," is one of the most revolutionary and
history-making utterances that ever fell from those lips divine. That utterance,
once and for all, marked the divorcement of church and state. It marked a new
era for the creeds and deeds of men. It was the sunrise gun of a new day, the
echoes of which are to go on and on and on until in every land, whether great or
small, the doctrine shall have absolute supremacy everywhere of a free church in
a free state.

In behalf of
our Baptist people I am compelled to say that forgetfulness of the principles
that I have just enumerated, in our judgment, explains many of the religious
ills that now afflict the world. All went well with the early churches in their
earlier days. They were incomparably triumphant days for the Christian faith.
Those early disciples of Jesus, without prestige and worldly power, yet aflame
with the love of God and the passion of Christ, went out and shook the pagan
Roman Empire from center to circumference, even in one brief generation.
Christ?s religion needs no prop of any kind from any worldly source, and to the
degree that it is thus supported is a millstone hanged about its neck.

AN INCOMPARABLE APOSTASY

Presently
there came an incomparable apostasy in the realm of religion, which shrouded the
world in spiritual night through long hundreds of years. Constantine, the
Emperor, saw something in the religion of Christ?s people which awakened his
interest, and now we see him uniting religion to the state and marching up the
marble steps of the Emperor?s palace, with the church robed in purple. Thus and
there was begun the most baneful misalliance that ever fettered and cursed a
suffering world. For long centuries, even from Constantine to Pope Gregory VII,
the conflict between church and state waxed stronger and stronger, and the
encroachments and usurpations became more deadly and devastating. When
Christianity first found its way into the city of the Caesars it lived at first
in cellars and alleys, but when Constantine crowned the union of church and
state, the church was stamped with the spirit of the Caesars. Soon we see a Pope
emerging, who himself became a Caesar, and soon a group of councilors may be
seen gathered around this Pope, and the supreme power of the church is assumed
by the Pope and his councilors.

The long
blighting record of the medieval ages is simply the working out of that idea.
The Pope ere long assumed to be the monarch of the world, making the astounding
claim that all kings and potentates were subject unto him. By and by when Pope
Gregory VII appears, better known as Hildebrand, his assumptions are still more
astounding. In him the spirit of the Roman church became incarnate and
triumphant. He lorded it over parliaments and council chambers, having statesmen
to do his bidding, and creating and deposing kings at his will. For example,
when the Emperor Henry offended Hildebrand, the latter pronounced against Henry
a sentence not only of excommunication but of deposition as Emperor, releasing
all Christians from allegiance to him. He made the Emperor do penance by
standing in the snow with his bare feet at Canossa, and he wrote his famous
letter to William the Conqueror to the effect that the state was subordinate to
the church, that the power of the state as compared to the church was as the
moon compared to the sun.

This
explains the famous saying of Bismarck when Chancellor of Germany, to the German
Parliament: "We will never go to Canossa again." Whoever favors the authority of
the church over the state favors the way to Canossa.

When, in the
fullness of time, Columbus discovered America, the Pope calmly announced that he
would divide the New World into two parts, giving one part to the King of Spain
and the other to the King of Portugal. And not only did this great consolidated
ecclesiasticism assume to lord it over men?s earthly treasures, but they lorded
it over men?s minds, prescribing what men should think and read and write. Nor
did such assumption stop with the things of this world, but it laid its hand on
the next world, and claimed to have in its possession the keys of the Kingdom of
Heaven and the kingdom of purgatory so that it could shut men out of heaven or
lift them out of purgatory, thus surpassing in the sweep of its power and in the
pride of its autocracy the boldest and most presumptuous ruler that ever sat on
a civil throne.

ABSOLUTISM VS. INDIVIDUALISM

The student
of history cannot fail to observe that through the long years two ideas have
been in endless antagonism ? the idea of absolutism and the idea of
individualism, the idea of autocracy and the idea of democracy. The idea of
autocracy is that supreme power is vested in the few, who, in turn, delegate
this power to the many. That was the dominant idea of the Roman Empire, and upon
that idea has found world wide impression in the realms both civil and
ecclesiastical. Often have the two ideas, absolutism versus individualism,
autocracy versus democracy, met in battle. Autocracy dared, in the morning of
the twentieth century, to crawl out of its ugly lair and proposed to substitute
the law of the jungles for the law of human brotherhood. For all time to come
the hearts of men will stand aghast upon every thought of this incomparable
death drama, and at the same time they will renew the vow that the few shall not
presumptuously tyrannize over the many; that the law of the jungle shall be
given supremacy in all human affairs. And until the principle of democracy,
rather than the principle of autocracy, shall be regnant in the realm of
religion, our mission shall be commanding and unending.

THE REFORMATION INCOMPLETE

The coming
of the sixteenth century was the dawning of a new hope for the world. With that
century came the Protestant Reformation. Yonder goes Luther with his theses,
which he nails over the old church door in Wittenberg, and the echoes of the
mighty deed shake the Papacy, shake Europe, shake the whole world. Luther was
joined by Melancthon and Calvin and Zwingli and other mighty leaders. Just as
this point emerges one of the most outstanding anomalies of all history.
Although Luther and his compeers protested vigorously against the errors of
Rome, yet when these mighty men came out of Rome?and mighty men they were?they
brought with them some of the grievous errors of Rome. The Protestant
Reformation of the Sixteenth century was sadly incomplete?it Luther and his
compeers grandly sounded out was a case of arrested development. Although the
battle cry of justification by faith alone, yet they retained the doctrine of
infant baptism and a state church. They shrank from the logical conclusions of
their own theses.

In Zurich
there stands a statue in honor of Zwingli, in which he is represented with a
Bible in one hand and a sword in the other. That statue was the symbol of the
union between church and state. The same statue might have been reared to Luther
and his fellow reformers. Luther and Melancthon fastened a state church upon
Germany, and Zwingli fastened it upon Switzerland. Knox and his associates
fastened it upon Scotland. Henry VIII bound it upon England, where it remains
even till this very hour.

These mighty
reformers turned out to be persecutors like the Papacy before them. Luther
unloosed the dogs of persecution against the struggling and faithful
Anabaptists. Calvin burned Servetus, and to such awful deed Melancthon gave him
approval. Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, shut the doors of all the
Protestant churches, and outlawed the Huguenots. Germany put to death that
mighty Baptist leader, Balthaser Hubmaier, while Holland killed her noblest
statesman, John of Barneveldt, and condemned to life imprisonment her ablest
historian, Hugo Grotius, for conscience? sake. In England, John Bunyan was kept
in jail for twelve long, weary years because of his religion, and when we cross
the mighty ocean separating the Old World and the New, we find the early pages
of American history crimsoned with the stories of religious persecutions. The
early colonies of America were the forum of the working out of the most epochal
battles that earth ever knew for the triumph of religious and civil liberty.

AMERICA AND RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL
LIBERTY

Just a brief
glance at the struggle in those early colonies must now suffice us. Yonder in
Massachusetts, Henry Dunster, the first president of Harvard, was removed from
the presidency because he objected to infant baptism. Roger Williams was
banished, John Clarke was put in prison, and they publicly whipped Obadiah
Holmes on Boston Common. In Connecticut the lands of our Baptist fathers were
confiscated and their goods sold to build a meeting house and support a preacher
of another denomination. In old Virginia, "mother of states and statesmen," the
battle for religious and civil liberty was waged all over her nobly historic
territory, and the final triumph recorded there was such as to write
imperishable glory upon the name of Virginia until the last syllable of recorded
time. Fines and imprisonments and persecutions were everywhere in evidence in
Virginia for conscience? sake. If you would see a record incomparably
interesting, go read the early statutes in Virginia concerning the Established
Church and religion, and trace the epic story of the history-making struggles of
that early day. If the historic records are to be accredited, those clergymen of
the Established Church in Virginia made terrible inroads in collecting fines in
Baptist tobacco in that early day. It is quite evident, however, that they did
not get all the tobacco.

On and on
was the struggle waged by our Baptist fathers for religious liberty in Virginia,
in the Carolinas, in Georgia, in Rhode Island and Massachusetts and Connecticut,
and elsewhere, with one unyielding contention for unrestricted religious liberty
for all men, and with never one wavering note. They dared to be odd, to stand
alone, to refuse to conform, though it cost them suffering and even life itself.
They dared to defy traditions and customs, and deliberately chose the day of non
conformity, even though in many a case it meant a cross. They pleaded and
suffered, they offered their protests and remonstrances and memorials, and,
thank God, mighty statesmen were won to their contention. Washington and
Jefferson and Madison and Patrick Henry, and many others, until at last it was
written into our country?s Constitution that church and state must in this land
be forever separate and free, that neither must ever trespass upon the
distinctive functions of the other. It was preeminently a Baptist achievement.

A LONELY STRUGGLE

Glad are our
Baptist people to pay their grateful tribute to their fellow Christians of other
religious communions for all their sympathy and help in this sublime
achievement. Candor compels me to repeat that much of the sympathy of other
religious leaders in that early struggle was on the side of legalized
ecclesiastical privilege. Much of the time were Baptists pitiably lonely in
their age-long struggle. We would now and always make our most grateful
acknowledgment to any and all who came to the side of our Baptist fathers,
whether early or late, in this destiny-determining struggle. But I take it that
every informed man on the subject, whatever his religious faith, will be willing
to pay tribute to our Baptist people as being the chief instrumentality in God?s
hands in winning the battle in America for religious liberty. Do you recall
Tennyson?s little poem, in which he sets out the history of the seed of freedom?
Catch its philosophy:

Once in a golden hour
I cast to earth a seed,
Up there came a flower,
The people said, a weed.
To and fro they went,
Through my garden bower,
And muttering discontent,
Cursed me and my flower.
"Then it grew so tall,
It wore a crown of light,
But thieves from o?er the wall,
Stole the seed by night.
Sowed it far and wide.
By every town and tower,
Till all the people cried,
?Splendid is the flower.?
Read my little fable:
He who runs may read,
Most can grow the flowers now,
For all have got the seed.

Very well,
we are very happy for all our fellow religionists of every denomination and
creed to have this splendid flower of religious liberty, but you will allow us
to remind you that you got the seed in our Baptist garden. We are very happy for
you to have it; now let us all make the best of it and the most of it.

THE PRESENT CALL

And now, my
fellow Christians, and fellow citizens, what is the present call to us in
connection with the priceless principle of religious liberty? That principle,
with all the history and heritage accompanying it, imposes upon us obligations
to the last degree meaningful and responsible. Let us today and forever be
highly resolved that the principle of religious liberty shall, please God, be
preserved inviolate through all our days and the days of those who come after
us. Liberty has both its perils and its obligations. We are to see to it that
our attitude toward liberty, both religious and civil, both as Christians and as
citizens, is an attitude consistent and constructive and worthy. We are to
"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar?s and unto God the
things that are God?s." We are members of the two realms, the civil and the
religious, and are faithfully to render unto each all that each should receive
at our hands; we are to be alertly watchful day and night, that liberty, both
religious and civil, shall be nowhere prostituted and mistreated. Every
perversion and misuse of liberty tends by that much to jeopardize both church
and state.

There comes
now the clarion call to us to be the right kind of citizens. Happily, the record
of our Baptist people toward civil government has been a record of unfading
honor. Their love and loyalty to country have not been put to shame in any land.
In the long list of published Tories in connection with the Revolutionary War
there was not one Baptist name.

LIBERTY NOT ABUSED

It behooves
us now and ever to see to it that liberty is not abused. Well may we listen to
the call of Paul, that mightiest Christian of the long centuries, as he says:
"Brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not your liberty for an
occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another." This ringing declaration
should be heard and heeded by every class and condition of people throughout all
our wide stretching nation.

It is the
word to be heeded by religious teachers, and by editors, and by legislators, and
by everybody else. Nowhere is liberty to be used "for an occasion to the flesh."
We will take free speech and a free press, with all their excrescences and
perils, because of the high meaning of freedom, but we are to set ourselves with
all diligence not to use these great privileges in the shaming of liberty. A
free press?how often does it pervert its high privilege! Again and again, it may
be seen dragging itself through all the sewers of the social order, bringing to
light the moral cancers and leprosies of our poor world and glaringly exhibiting
them to the gaze even of responsive youth and childhood. The editor?s task,
whether in the realm of church or state, is an immeasurably responsible one.
These editors, side by side with the moral and religious teachers of the
country, are so to magnify the ballot box, a free press, free schools, the
courts, the majesty of law and reverence for all properly accredited authority
that our civilization may not be built on the shifting sands, but on the secure
and enduring foundations of righteousness.

Let us
remember that lawlessness, wherever found and whatever its form, is as "the
pestilence that walketh in darkness" and " the destruction that wasteth at
noonday." Let us remember that he who is willing for law to be violated is an
offender against the majority of law as really as he who actually violates law.
The spirit of law is the spirit of civilization. Liberty without law is anarchy.
Liberty against law is rebellion. Liberty limited by law is the formula of
civilization.

HUMANE AND RIGHTEOUS LAWS

Challenging
to the highest degree is the call that comes to legislators. They are to see to
it continually, in all their legislative efforts, that their supreme concern is
for the highest welfare of the people. Laws humane and righteous are to be
fashioned and then to be faithfully regarded. Men are playing with fire if they
lightly fashion their country?s laws and then trifle in their obedience to such
laws. Indeed, all citizens, the humblest and the most prominent alike, are
called to give their best thought to the maintenance of righteousness
everywhere. Much truth is there in the widely quoted saying: "Our country is
afflicted with the bad citizenship of good men." The saying points its own clear
lesson. "When righteous are in authority, the people rejoice, but when the
wicked bear rule, the people mourn." The people, all the people, are inexorably
responsible for the laws, the ideals, and the spirit that are necessary for the
making of a great and enduring civilization. Every man of us is to remember that
it is righteousness that exalteth a nation, and that it is sin that reproaches
and destroys a nation.

God does not
raise up a nation to go strutting selfishly, forgetful of the high interests of
humanity. National selfishness leads to destruction as truly as does individual
selfishness. Nations can no more live to themselves than can individuals.
Humanity is bound up together in the big bundle of life. The world is now one
big neighborhood. There are no longer any hermit nations. National isolation is
no longer possible in the earth. The markets of the world instantly register
every commercial change. An earthquake in Asia is at once registered in
Washington City. The people on one side of the world may not dare to be
indifferent to the people on the other side. Every man of us is called to be a
world citizen, and to think and act in world terms. The nation that insists upon
asking that old murderous question of Cain, "Am I my brother?s keeper?" the
question of the profiteer and the question of the slacker, is a nation marked
for decay and doom and death. The parable of the Good Samaritan is Heaven?s law
for nations as well as for individuals. Some things are worthy dying for, and if
they are worth dying for they are worth living for. The poet was right when he
sang:

Though love repine and reason
chafe.
There comes a voice without reply,
?Tis man?s perdition to be safe,
When for the truth he ought to die.

THINGS WORTH DYING FOR

When this
nation went into the World War a little while ago, after her long and patient
and fruitless effort to find another way of conserving righteousness, the note
was sounded in every nook and corner of our country that some things in this
world are worth dying for, and if they are worth dying for they are worth living
for. What are some of the things worth dying for? The sanctity of womanhood is
worth dying for. The safety of childhood is worth dying for; and when Germany
put to death that first helpless Belgian child, she was marked for defeat and
doom. The integrity of one?s country is worth dying for. And, please God, the
freedom and honor of the United States of America are worth dying for. If the
great things of life are worth dying for, they are surely worth living for. Our
great country may not dare to isolate herself from all the rest of the world,
and selfishly say: "We propose to live and die to ourselves, leaving all the
other nations with their weaknesses and burdens and sufferings to go their ways
without our help." This nation cannot pursue any such policy and expect the
favor of God. Myriads of voices, both from the living and the dead, summon us to
a higher and better way. Happy am I to believe that God has his prophets not
only in the pupils of the churches but also in the schoolrooms, in the editor?s
chair, in the halls of legislation, in the marts of commerce, in the realms of
literature. Tennyson was a prophet when in "Locksley Hall," he sang:

For I dipt into the future, far
as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain?d a ghastly dew
From the nations? airy naives grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the people plunging thro? the thunder-storm.
Till the war drum throbb?d no longer,
and the battle-flags were furled In the Parlament of man,
the Federation of the world.

A LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Tennyson
believed in a league of nations, and well might he so believe, because God is on
his righteous throne, and inflexible are his purposes touching righteousness and
peace for a weary, sinning, suffering, dying world. Standing here today on the
steps of our nation?s Capitol, hard by the chamber of the Senate of the United
States, I dare to say as a citizen and as a Christian teacher, that the moral
forces of the United States of America, without regard to political parties,
will never rest until there is a worthy League of Nations. I dare to express
also the unhesitating belief that the unquestioned majorities of both great
political parties in this country regard the delay in the working out of a
League of Nations as a national and world-wide tragedy.

The moral
and religious forces of this country could not be supine and inactive as long as
the saloon, the chief rendezvous of small politicians, that chronic criminal and
standing anachronism of our modern civilization, was legally sponsored by the
state. I can certify all the politicians of all the political parties that the
legalized saloon has gone from American life, and gone to stay. Likewise, I can
certify the men of all political parties without any reference to partisan
politics, that the same moral and religious forces of this country, because of
the inexorable moral issues involved, cannot be silent and will not be silent
until there is put forth a League of Nations that will strive with all its might
to put an end to the diabolism and measureless horrors of war. I thank God that
the stricken man yonder in the White House has pleaded long and is pleading yet
that our nation will take her full part with the others for the bringing in of
that blessed day when wars shall cease to the ends of the earth.

The recent
World War calls to us with a voice surpassingly appealing and responsible.
Surely Alfred Noyes voices the true desire for us:

Make firm, O God, the peace our
dead have won
For folly shakes the tinsel on its head,
And points us back to darkness and to hell,
Cackling, "Beware of visions," while our dead Still cry, "It was for visions
that we fell."
They never knew the secret game of power,
All that this earth can give they thrust aside,
They crowded all their youth unto an hour,
And for fleeting dream of right, they died.
"Oh, if we fail them in that awful trust,
How should we bear those voices from the dust?

THE RIGHT KIND OF CHRISTIANS

This noble
doctrine and heritage of religious liberty calls to us imperiously to be the
right kind of Christians. Let us never forget that a democracy, whether civil or
religious, has not only its perils, but has also its inescapable obligations. A
democracy calls for intelligence. The sure foundations of states must be laid,
not in ignorance, but in knowledge. It is of the last importance that those who
rule shall be properly trained. In a democracy, a government of the people, for
the people, and by the people, the people are the rulers, and the people, all
the people, are to be informed and trained.

My fellow
Christians, we must hark back to our Christian schools, and see to it that these
schools are put on worthy and enduring foundations. A democracy needs more than
intelligence, it needs Christ. He is the light of the world, nor is there any
other sufficient light for the world. He is the solution of the world?s complex
questions, the one adequate Helper for its dire needs, the one only sufficient
Saviour for our sinning race. Our schools are afresh to take note of this
supreme fact, and they are to be fundamentally and aggressively Christian. Wrong
education brought on the recent World War. Such education will always lead to
disaster.

Pungent were
the recent words of Mr. Lloyd George: "The most formidable foe that we had to
fight in Germany was not the arsenals of Krupp, but the schools of Germany." The
educational center of the world will not longer be in the Old World, but because
of the great war, such center will henceforth be in this New World of America.
We must build here institutions of learning that will be shot through and
through with the principles and motives of Christ, the one Master over all
mankind.

THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL

The time has
come when, as never before, our beloved denomination should worthily go out to
its world task as a teaching denomination. That means that there should be a
crusade throughout all our borders for the vitalizing and strengthening of our
Christian schools. The only complete education, in the nature of the case, is
Christian education, because man is a tripartite being. By the very genius of
our government, education by the state cannot be complete. Wisdom has fled from
us if we fail to magnify, and magnify now, our Christian schools. These schools
go to the foundation of the life of people. They are indispensable to the
highest efficiency of the churches. Their inspirational influences are of untold
value to the schools conducted by the state, to which schools also we must ever
give our best support. It matters very much, do you not agree, who shall be the
leaders, and what the standards in the affairs of civil government and in the
realm of business life? One recalls the pithy saying of Napoleon to Marshal Ney:
"An army of deer led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a deer."
Our Christian schools are to train not only our religious leaders but hosts of
our leaders in the civil and business realm as well.

The one
transcending inspiring influence in civilization is the Christian religion. By
all means let the teachers and trustees and student bodies of all our Christian
schools remember this supremely important fact, that civilization without
Christianity is doomed. Let there be no pagan ideals in our Christian schools,
and no hesitation or apology for the insistence that the one hope for the
individual, the one hope for society, from civilization, is in the Christian
religion. If ever the drum beat of duty sounded clearly, it is calling to us now
to strengthen and magnify our Christian schools.

THE TASK OF EVANGELISM

Preceding
and accompanying the task of building our Christian schools, we must keep
faithfully and practically in mind our primary task of evangelism, the work of
winning souls from sin unto salvation, from Satan unto God. This work takes
precedence of all other work in the Christian program. Salvation for sinners is
through Jesus Christ alone, nor is there any other name or way under heaven
whereby they may be saved. Our churches, our schools, our religious papers, our
hospitals, every organization and agency of the churches should be kept aflame
with the passion of New Testament evangelism. Our cities and towns and villages
and country places are to echo continually with the sermons and songs of the
gospel evangel. The people, high and low, rich and poor, the foreigners, all the
people are to be faithfully told of Jesus and his great salvation, and entreated
to come unto him to be saved by him and to become his fellow workers. The only
sufficient solvent for all the questions in America?individual, social,
economic, industrial, financial, political, educational, moral and religious?is
to be found in the Saviour-hood and Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Give is a watchword for the
hour,
A thrilling word, a word of power;
A battle cry, a flaming breath,
That calls to conquest or to death;
A word to rouse the church from rest,
To heed its Master?s high behest,
The call is given, Ye hosts arise;
Our watchword is Evangelize!
The glad Evangel now proclaim,
Through all the earth in Jesus? name,
This word is ringing through the skies,
Evangelize! Evangelize!
To dying men, a fallen race,
Make known the gift of Gospel Grace;
The world that now in darkness lies,
Evangelize! Evangelize!

A WORLD PROGRAM

While thus
caring for the homeland, we are at the same time to see to it that our program
is co-extensive with Christ?s program for the whole world. The whole world is
our field, nor may we, with impunity, dare to be indifferent to any section,
however remote, not a whit less than that, and with our plans sweeping the whole
earth, we are to go forth with believing faith and obedient service, to seek to
bring all humanity, both near and far, to the faith and service of him who came
to be the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the
sins of the whole world.

His
commission covers the whole world and reaches to every human being. Souls in
China, and India, and Japan, and Europe, and Africa, and the islands of the sea,
are as precious to him as souls in the United States. By the love we bear our
Saviour, by the love we bear our fellows, by the greatness and preciousness of
the trust committed to us, we are bound to take all the world upon our hearts
and to consecrate our utmost strength to bring all humanity under the sway of
Christ?s redeeming love. Let us go to such task, saying with the immortal
Wesley, "The world is my parish," and with him may we also be able to say, "And
best of all, God is with us."

A GLORIOUS DAY

Glorious it
is, my fellow Christians, to be living in such a day as this, if only we shall
live as we ought to live. Irresistible is the conviction that the immediate
future is packed with amazing possibilities. We can understand the cry of Rupert
Brooke as he sailed from Gallipoli, "Now God be thanked who hath matched us with
this hour!" The day of the reign of the common people is everywhere coming like
the rising tides of the ocean. The people are everywhere breaking with
feudalism. Autocracy is passing, whether it be civil or ecclesiastical.
Democracy is the goal toward which all feet are traveling, whether in state or
in church.

The demands
upon us now are enough to make an archangel tremble. Themistocles had a way of
saying that he could not sleep at night for thinking of Marathon. What was
Marathon compared to a day like this? John C. Calhoun, long years ago, stood
there and said to his fellow workers in the National Congress: "I beg you to
lift up your eyes to the level of the conditions that now confront the American
republic." Great as was that day spoken of by Mr. Calhoun, it was as a tiny babe
beside a giant compared to the day that now confronts you and me. Will we be
alert to see our day and be faithful enough to measure up to its high demands?

THE PRICE TO BE PAID

Are we
willing to pay the price that must be paid to secure for humanity the blessings
it needs to have? We say that we have seen God in the face of Jesus Christ, that
we have been born again, that we are the true friends of Christ, and would make
proof of our friendship for him by doing his will. Well, then, what manner of
people ought we to be in all holy living and godliness? Surely we should be a
holy people, remembering the apostolic characterization, "Ye are a chosen
generation; a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that we
should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into
his marvelous light: which in time past were not a people, but are now the
people of God."

Let us look
again to the strange passion and power of the early Christians. They paid the
price for spiritual power. Mark well this record: "And they overcame him by the
blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their
lives unto the death." O my fellow Christians, if we are to be in the true
succession of the mighty days and deeds of the early Christian era, or of those
mighty days and deeds of our Baptist fathers in later days, then selfish ease
must be utterly renounced for Christ and his cause and our every gift and grace
and power utterly dominated by the dynamic of his Cross. Standing here today in
the shadow of our country?s Capitol, compassed about as we are with so great a
cloud of witnesses, let us today renew our pledge to God, and to one another,
that we will give our best to church and to state, to God and to humanity, by
his grace and power, until we fall on the last sleep.

If in such
spirit we will give ourselves to all the duties that await us, then we may go
our ways, singing more vehemently than our fathers sang them, those lines of
Whittier:

Our fathers to their graves
have gone,
Their strife is passed, their triumphs won;
But greater tasks await the race
Which comes to take their honored place,
A moral warfare with the crime
And folly of an evil time.
So let it be, in God?s own sight,
We gird us for the coming flight;
And strong in Him whose cause is ours,
In conflict with unholy powers,
We grasp the weapons He has given,
The light and truth and love of Heaven.